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Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

theguardian.com

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Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#321

Post by cma »

peder wrote: post #308
vanjajaja1 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its very likely to cause reciprocal tariffs though, and exports of Hollywood way out weigh the imports of foreign films

There are big issues with foreign cinema. We still have a lot of structural advantages in the US to producing films. Production has shifted to other countries because of significant tax incentives. These tax incentives are a way that other countries are frankly not playing fair. The bottom line for me is that we shouldn't simply accept that films should all be filmed in Canada, Australia, the UK, or elsewhere. Hollyw…

US has tons of tax incentives for film, just at the state level. And Trump announced 100% tariffs across the board regardless of if a country has film subsidies.

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#322

Post by mopsi »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #61
dijit wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollywood undoubtedly has more money, but you genuinely have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to the quality of what gets made. So many things that hollywood produces are remakes of foreign movies, except with an order of magnitude more money poured in and palate-switched for american audiences. (which, due to the sheer volume of content that comes out of hollywood- becomes the default international pa…

Every country has 5 or 10 good movies you can name, and they're always the same ones. Brat and Brat 2, Leviathan and Durak... the list doesn't go on much beyond that. And certainly not in the last 20 years. For US movies, the list goes on. And you can debate which ones should make the top-100. But here's a pivotal soviet comedy about a guy who goes to the future... okay, here's Bob Zemeckis's Back to the Future . Com…

  > But here's a pivotal soviet comedy about a guy who goes to the future... okay, here's Bob Zemeckis's Back to the Future. Compare the quality of any aspect: story, acting, props, costumes, cinematography, special fx, attention to detail, MUSIC... 1:1 US cinema destroys on every level.
There's a Russian saying "no point in comparing finger with a dick". "Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession" was made in 1973 on a budget that was modest even by Soviet standards. It looks like a cheap TV movie for a reason: they reused existing sets and decorations from other movies. The few Hollywood sci-fi comedies of the early 1970s are of similar quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BOnUobhm6U

Non-modest Soviet productions of the era, such as the 1970 "Waterloo", are spectacular by any standard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyytd8HhuME

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#323

Post by 5555624 »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #139
a2tech wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An argument could be made that the Ancients built Stargate's in places they wanted to go/were comfortable for them, and those areas were like BC

Iirc, either Carter or Daniel Jackson pretty much said something along those lines in one of the later seasons. Not the BC part specifically, but about why stargates were usually on planets pretty comfortable for humans. But the overarching point is that even shows where at least one of the actors (RDA) were given an award by the US Air Force for their depiction of the branch, were largely filmed outside the US.

It's said several times. The first time I can recall is Carter says it to her father in "The Tok’ra, Part 2" in season two.

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#324

Post by peder »

misja111 wrote: post #120
ur-whale wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what this is about. Most American movies are shot outside of the US these days because among other factors Hollywood unions have made it way more expensive to shoot in the US.

Well these were the words from the horse's mouth: “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat,” Trump said in the Truth Social post. “It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!” To me this seems to motivate the tariffs as a battle against foreign propaganda.

Well, yes. American films obviously have been soft on China because they've been desperate for access to the Chinese market. You don't bite the hand that feeds. In a similar way, if a significant amount of film production moves to the UK, it's likely that criticisms of the UK would be more muted. In the long run, this creates a national security threat when our media is inundated with non-neutral messages about other countries that are not acting in our best interest.

The easy way to see this is to reverse your lens. We've been the beneficiary of soft power from Hollywood for a century. It'd be ridiculous to lose that power without at least trying to preserve it.

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#325

Post by jparishy »

Spooky23 wrote: post #293
jparishy wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can see everyone willfully ignoring this here, which makes me nervous about actually solving this problem long term. I used to dream of screenwriting and that dream is almost certainly dead but I'd like to see others have a chance. It looks bleak now

Why would you be surprised? Are you expecting some sort of pro-labor movement in a startup focused tech forum? Modern tech is all about disruption. You get paid way too much because you’re squeezing costs (ie labor) out of business operations. There was an action movie that filmed car chases in my city about 15 years ago. A bunch of the crew was at a bar I hung out with and we were trading stories. There was a dude w…

my view of capitalism is that you can't remove the market. it will exist with or without you, so if you have some control you should incentivize the things that are better for everyone.

To me I think it's possible for Netflix and Amazon and whoever to exist and make a lot of money, but also not have nation-state level power. The latter is something we haven't decided we want yet, but I think we'll come around. If there were even just very small controls (that worked) on the size of a company, or how many industries it can go into, then things would look differently. But when we let so few companies consolidate so much power through money, the status quo is a pretty natural outcome. Imagine a world where there were regional amazon.com's, because we just decided at some point they got too big. Same for google. We'd have actual competition. Tech enables market consolidation in ways we didn't expect and we have to do some actual work to fix it.

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#326

Post by DeusExMachina »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #297
DeusExMachina wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it's about movies produced overseas, I don't think the nationality of the actors or the overseas revenue counts. But it probaby counts that it was shot in the UK. The reason why Disney does that is because they get tax breaks from the UK government, which I think it's what Trump is referring to.

The overseas revenue is important as companies will need to prioritise markets. They don’t want to choose, but if they have to, they’ll prefer to keep 60% of the revenue over 40%. Assuming some sort of reciprocal actions, the risk is making Hollywood “less American”.

Reciprocal actions are not going to affect the whole 60%.

I assume there are very few locations like the UK that are going to be significantly hit by the tarifs and might react with countermeasures that will affect only a small part of the overseas revenue.

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#327

Post by ecocentrik »

vanjajaja1 wrote: post #196
peder wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tariff isn't an attack on Hollywood. This helps actors and staff in the Hollywood area.

its very likely to cause reciprocal tariffs though, and exports of Hollywood way out weigh the imports of foreign films

And it will very likely lead to issues with financing films. Many films these days are shot in multiple locations and use foreign financing, tax breaks and subsidies, sometimes accepting funds from multiple countries.

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#328

Post by unsupp0rted »

mopsi wrote: post #322
unsupp0rted wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country has 5 or 10 good movies you can name, and they're always the same ones. Brat and Brat 2, Leviathan and Durak... the list doesn't go on much beyond that. And certainly not in the last 20 years. For US movies, the list goes on. And you can debate which ones should make the top-100. But here's a pivotal soviet comedy about a guy who goes to the future... okay, here's Bob Zemeckis's Back to the Future . Com…

> But here's a pivotal soviet comedy about a guy who goes to the future... okay, here's Bob Zemeckis's Back to the Future. Compare the quality of any aspect: story, acting, props, costumes, cinematography, special fx, attention to detail, MUSIC... 1:1 US cinema destroys on every level. There's a Russian saying "no point in comparing finger with a dick". "Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession" was made in 1973 on a…

The difference is that nobody holds up "The Thing with Two Heads" or "The Cat from Outer Space' as must-watch American cinema

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#329

Post by kjksf »

Maybe people should first understand the context of this.

Apparently, here's the data:

California is losing its grip on the film industry as Canada, the UK, and Australia outspend the U.S. on production subsidies.

LA’s soundstage occupancy dropped to 90% pre-strikes, while Warner Brothers and Netflix ramp up overseas filming.

Even a $3.75 billion tax credit boost might not be enough to keep Hollywood on top.

Meanwhile, Vancouver is adding 20 new soundstages, and UK productions hit a record $7 billion.

Here's Ben Affleck talking about this: https://nypost.com/2025/04/18/entertainment/ben-affleck-crit..., https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1913449981643456612

Here's Adam Scott and Rob Lowe talking about it: https://x.com/medx0/status/1919178518031896903

Basically it seems that movie production and jobs created by it moved outside of US in a massive way.

Hence the leftist tarrifs meant to reverse that and bring movie production back in US

Re: Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

#330

Post by card_zero »

kjksf wrote: post #286
artemisart wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you understand it will harm Hollywood? This is the economic, country scale equivalent of saying "fuck your movies", do you think the answer will be "oh sorry, I'll keep buying yours" or "fuck your movies too"?

It will reduce the profit margins of Hollywood studios. Maybe reduce the bonuses of their CEO. It'll help thousands of Americans that used to be employed by said studios but were fired not because they couldn't do the job but because the greed of studio execs made them move production outside of the US, playing financial arbitrage games against the interest of the US. Trump is trying to reverse this by making movies…

This kills the movies.
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